Environmental Health Traineeship and Fellowship Program

The Environmental Health (EH) Traineeship and Fellowship Program is designed to meet CDC’s defined prevention strategy goal of “strengthening local, state, and federal public health infrastructures to support surveillance and implement prevention and control programs” specific to environmental health initiatives. The program provides APHL-member state public health laboratories the opportunity to initiate and/or enhance environmental health testing capabilities. This may occur through either or both of the following tracks:

• EH Traineeship: Short-term (2-6 week) specialized training in environmental health technology and testing methods for current laboratory staff (a “trainee”)
• EH Fellowship: Recruiting and hosting a one or two-year full-time “fellow” (not on current staff) who would be based in your laboratory and receive short-term (2-6 week) training opportunities from other state or federal laboratories, and/or other appropriate facilities.

Both tracks offer the laboratory a high degree of flexibility. Laboratory directors may identify their specific needs and the corresponding technologies and practices that would benefit the laboratory. For example, training may focus on:

• Development and application of analytical methods for measuring organic and inorganic toxicants, and their metabolites in physiologic samples collected from humans.
• Development and application of methods in biomarker analysis and molecular biology and studies of special populations and subgroups susceptible to injury from environmental toxicants.
• Development and application of methods for screening groups of individuals to determine exposure status, nutritional status, or smoking status.
• Development of computer systems for tracking specimens, preparation of reports, data transmission, and laboratory-based disease surveillance.
• Development of innovative, appropriate and sustainable environmental health analytical methods suitable for use by local and state environmental health programs, in field settings, and monitoring applications.